Balloon Away

[Baxter]

I found this scenario in the files section and thought Windy and I would try it out last night. It is a runaway Central Powers Balloon scenario where Allied single seaters try to shoot it down and Central Powers single seaters try to protect it. What made it interesting was the use of the D deck for balloon movement that was to simulate winds. Normal collision rules applied which made it very dangerous to get too close to the balloon. No photos were taken during game play.

Windy Jack selected a B firing Spad VII as his steed and I picked an A firing Pfalz D.III. I think we made the mistake of treating the balloon as a normal plane where the movement card is placed at the front and then the base is moved so the rear lines up with the arrow mark on the movement card. This made the balloon virtually impossible to catch as it was way faster than the attacking plane. Also, the Pfalz D.III although robust is not fast enough to catch the Spad so all in all the game was a seemingly endless procession punctuated with collisions when the balloon made an unpredictable movement. What I think we should have done is to place the movement card in front and move the front of the balloon base up to the arrow head which would have made a much shorter movement.

We found that the D deck was not suitable to simulate balloon movement. For example, the balloon making Immelmans and sharp right/left turns did not seem real. The balloon clearly had the best manoeuvre deck in the game. We used the same explosion card rule as last week too in that if a boom card was drawn then it was put to one side and the plane that drew it then took twice the normal amount of damage cards.

After an hour or more we decided to call it quite. The damage was quite interesting. 18 damage cards were drawn by the balloon and the two fighters. Only 5 cards had damage numbers on them. The balloon took a 1 and a 2 plus 4 zero cards. The Pfalz took two 2's and four zero cards. The Spad took a 1 and five zero cards! Given that half the zero cards drawn were from the C deck that was a most unlikely series of draws!

Will we play this one again? Yes probably but we would use a deck like the XD for the balloon.

[RJG173]

Since 18 of the 34 cards in a C damage deck are zeroes, I don't think your results are unusual.

[zenlizard]

And roughly (from memory, I could be wrong) half the cards in a B damage deck, and maybe about 40% of an A deck? Your experience, while unusual, is not statistically (certainly not infinitely) improbable.